FWs Durabillity

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by RPS69

Actually, I will really like to see any proof of severing a wing from a 190 on reality using .50s. Wings got severed not by enemy fire itself, but by a weakening of it's structure and spars that are subjected to high pressure.

You're right, of course. It's rare that any sort of small caliber gunfire - even counting 30mm guns as "small" - directly causes structural failure.

Instead, as you point out, what happens is that the gunfire sufficiently weakens the airframe that the forces of gravity, g-forces, and air resistance take over and cause structural collapse.

If you look at combat films where an aircraft's wing fails, often you'll see a slight delay before the wing comes off. Sometimes, you'll even see the wing "fold" as it collapses. That means that the gunfire/fire just fatally weakened the wing and gravity and air pressure finished the job.

I don't know if IL2 can model progressive weakening of damaged parts. Obviously, the game models parts pulling off due to overspeed flight, but I'm not sure if the game progressively reduces the top speed and maximum G load a damaged part can sustain without failing.

For the experiments I did with the FW-190, they were mostly in level flight or making relatively low-G turns, and were never traveling at excessive speeds. So, I have no way of knowing if the FW-190's wing might have failed had it been exposed to greater stresses, assuming the game even models that sort of failure.

Originally Posted by RPS69

Also you could got the ammo rack exploded if it was simulated on il-2 at all, but it is not.

I'm pretty sure that all a hit to the 20mm cannon magazine does is trigger a "gun jammed" hit. IL2 doesn't seem to model the possibility of bullets/cannon shells exploding. To be fair, that possibility is rare, since it requires just the right circumstances for one bullet/cannon shell to make another bullet/shell explode.

Originally Posted by RPS69

190's were really sturdy for their time. Much more so than a 109.

Of course the men who flew the FW-190 thought that it was a tougher plane than the Bf-109! The FW-190 was heavier (3,200 kg for the FW-190A-8 vs. 2,247 kg for the Bf-109G-6) and the basic airframe was designed 5 years after the Bf-109's (1937 vs. 1933) giving it at least a "generation" of progressive improvements in airframe construction.

The real question is whether the FW-190 was any tougher than aircraft of equivalent quality of construction, designed in the same year, and with roughly equivalent mass. For example, should the FW-190's AIRFRAME be any tougher than that of the P-51 D (designed 1939/40, 3,465 kg empty mass) or the P-40E (designed 1938, 2,753 kg empty mass)?

Unless you have a novel structural design which was famed for its structural strength or weakness - like the geodesic wing and fuselage structure of the Wellington or the delamination problems that some of the LaGG-3 series suffered - then really all you can do is base a plane's ability to absorb punishment on its year of production and its empty mass.

Perhaps divide by the number of engines and/or omit the mass of the engines as well.

Pilot reports of relative combat durability of their aircraft have to be read skeptically, because they're based on the accounts of the men who survived and came back to tell the tale. If a plane was well-liked by its crew, they were likely to overlook its lesser faults and sing its praises. If they disliked the type, they were likely to overlook its merits.

Also, unless you're reading the reports of a test pilot or an engineering commission, where the writer(s) had a chance to examine multiple different aircraft, the writer - even if he's an experienced combat veteran - might not necessarily be in the best position to make comparisons.

Originally Posted by RPS69

Even so, on the popular plane lists, it is the one that suffers more from single damage. It becomes almost impossible to land safely after any single shot on it's wings.

I agree, this is another way that the FW-190 is messed up. Just a handful of .50 caliber bullets scattered across the wings will trigger the heavy damage texture. That seems excessive considering that each .50 caliber bullet is only going to make a thumb-sized to fist-sized hole. (huge by human standards, but less impressive scattered across several square meters of space).

In some ways it seems like it's far too easy to damage the FW-190, in other ways it seems to be invulnerable.

Too weak: Far too vulnerable to having minor wing or fuselage damage turn into serious damage. Probably a bit too vulnerable to having control surfaces shot off/seriously damaged. Perhaps a bit too vulnerable to fuel tank fires (but no more vulnerable than equivalently equipped planes in the game).

Too easy to snap the fuselage due to damage (but this is IL2's method of modeling fatal fuselage damage that renders the plane unflyable. Since IL2 can't make airframes bend or shake, it breaks them instead.)

Too strong: Seems quite difficult for heavy damage to the wing (at least from .50 caliber guns) to convert to fatal damage - either directly or by causing structural failure under G-loads. Probably far too difficult to start an engine fire. Possibly too difficult to seriously damage/destroy vertical stabilizer.

Just right: Armor modeling, cockpit/crew hits, hydraulic failure which causes landing gear to begin to extend. Engine durability (excluding fires).

Missing/Not modeled (AFAIK): Potential "critical hit" to loaded 20mm cannon magazine can cause secondary explosion sufficient to instantly separate the wing.